


Always Winter

by halotolerant



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Tintin
Genre: Gen, Illnesses, Snow and Ice, Talking Animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 00:17:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/301661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Snow,” he murmurs, almost to himself. “I saw the snow, it was all nothing but snow, everywhere. He was trapped in it. He was calling for me.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always Winter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Signe (oxoniensis)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxoniensis/gifts).



Always Winter

\- - -

Tintin screams himself awake and finds he is sitting bolt upright, grabbing the sheets in his hands, gasping.

His breath billows white in the chill of the boarding school dormitory. It is dark, deep in the night, but Matron has left one lamp burning for them, a wan yellow light that dimly shows him the other boys stirring, groaning and looking over at him.

“Why are you shouting?” hisses Pierre from the next bed, rubbing a hand over his face. “What’s wrong?”

Tintin lies back on his pillow, heart still pounding. Although he has been tucked under sheets and blankets and the thick feather quilt that came from his parents’ missionary station in China, every inch of his skin is so freezing cold it aches, even the inside of his mouth.

“Snow,” he murmurs, almost to himself. “I saw the snow, it was all nothing but snow, everywhere. He was trapped in it. He was calling for me.”

 “Who was calling?” Pierre asks.

Tintin shakes his head - the dream is slipping away, images and impressions that were so clear disappearing like sugar does into hot water, when matron makes you the influenza medicine. His throat is sore now, raw and thick, as if he has been screaming for hours, not merely once.

“Was it Chang?” says Pierre softly, and Tintin jumps at the name, twisting his head to look across at him.

“That’s what you called out, Tintin. You sounded so frightened. You cried, ‘Chang!’”

\- - -

“How long have you been having these nightmares?” Matron asks, gently.

Tintin is standing in her room, heels together, hands behind his back, just as his father taught him when he was small.

He has had letters from his parents every six weeks exactly, without fail, for the last four years. They emphasise the importance of duty and obedience, and sometimes they send him something, a little carving or a picture, or delicate paper flowers folded into the pages, or – last month – the quilt, the thin silk turned stiff with embroidery; twisting, sinuous dragons.

“They aren’t nightmares,” he says, because he always tells the truth. “I go to sleep and then I find...” he sighs, struggling for words; it will be futile to explain but he must try. “It is a world that is entirely white, as far as you can see in every direction. It is always snowing. I go there and I hear him calling for me – I think he summons me there. But I’m lost in the storm and I can never find him and then I come back to my own bed.”

She shakes her head and tuts at him under her breath. “Come now, Tintin, you know that isn’t possible. Sit down, dear.” He obeys, perching nervously on the edge of her armchair, and she comes and sits next to him, putting her arm over his shoulders. She smells of menthol and strong washing powder.

“I’ve been told you call this boy ‘Chang’ when you dream, is that right? Isn’t that the name of the little boy your parents have adopted?”

Tintin stares fixedly ahead of him, digging his fingers into the hard-stuffed chair. He can never remember calling out anything. What he hears is the boy’s voice, calling _his_ name, over and over, crying for him desperately.

“Do you think, perhaps, Tintin, that it worries you, that they are looking after another little boy?”

Tintin bites his lip and shakes his head. China is another world, one he has no very clear certainty of -anything his parents do there cannot quite be real.

She’s frowning now, and he feels a cold in his stomach; he doesn’t want Matron to be cross with him.

“They are only dreams, Tintin. Try and think of something else when you go to sleep. Something nice and pleasant. I will let you sit with a light for five minutes and look at your Bible, if you like.”

He nods, helplessly, and she kisses the top of his head quickly and sends him on his way.

\- - -

That night, Tintin buries himself in his quilt, wrapping it round and round until a cocoon entirely encloses him and he is breathing the scent of the silk and the strange, exotic hint of spice that comes from the stuffing, the smell that must be China, and the intricate embroidery is twisted all around him, as if he were held in the very claws of the dragon.

When he wakes up, he doesn’t wake up.

He is in the dormitory, still, except that he isn’t, it is just his bed, on its own. It is cold, colder than the dormitory ever is, and something is brushing at his face. He reaches up to push it away, and hisses in shock as snow falls onto his face – he is under the spreading branches of a pine tree.

In every dream, it has been snowing - fierce, violent, painful snow lashing at his face, the screams coming at him from every direction and the howling, a terrible wild howling rending the air like a soul in torment.

It is peaceful here. He has woken in the depths of a forest, in the dark of the night, and in every direction there is nothing but the trees and the pristine, sparkling drifts of snow.

Keeping the quilt bundled around him tight, Tintin gets out of the bed and walks a few paces, sinking deep into the drifts.

It is silent. Perfectly silent, even the trees, as if everything is hushed, listening for something.

Beyond the tree trunks, a light is shining.

Struggling to move his feet, Tintin walks on towards the glow.

There is a lamp-post in the forest, tall and straight among the pines. As Tintin reaches it, a thin, soft snow starts falling, flakes twirling down against the light, landing on his eyelashes and lips and the recalcitrant curl of hair he can never make lie flat on his forehead; he is real, he is here, he is sure of that.

“You should turn back now,” says a voice, low and firm.

A voice very low – Tintin searches for the speaker a while until he spots, close to the ground, standing on a fallen log, a small, wire-hair terrier, white as the snow all around him.

They wait, boy and dog, staring at each other, and the snow keeps falling.

“Why?” Tintin asks softly, because what is the use of any other question?

“It’s not safe for your kind here,” the dog snaps. He is looking back and forth as he speaks, sniffing the air.

“My kind? Do you mean for boys?”

“Don’t speak so loudly!” It trots over to him, staring away into the forest. “However you got here, go back, before anyone comes.”

“I’m looking for a boy,” Tintin whispers, kneeling down to come closer to the dog’s eye-level. “He’s the one that called me to this place.”

The dog whines, low in his throat. “You can’t do any good here. Not on your own. Now turn back.”

“Are you some kind of guard?”

“Just because I’m a dog, he goes and assumes that!” the dog murmurs, peevishly. “I was just minding my own business, going my own way, and then I smelt you, and then I saw you, standing right there in the beam of the iron tree lanthorn, as if you wanted to be caught.”

“Who would catch me?”

“You never need to know. Now, go!” the last words come out with a growl and Tintin steps back a little before stopping and standing firm, feet slightly apart, hands behind his back as best he can manage whilst keeping the quilt in place.

“He’s in trouble,” Tintin points out. “He’s calling for me.”

The dog has gone low to the ground, ears back, teeth bare and Tintin trembles but doesn’t move until it hisses, “They’re coming! The trees have betrayed you, they’re coming! Go now or you’ll be of no use to him at all!”

From somewhere in the distance, Tintin can hear a faint jingling of bells. The dog growls again, gurgling and terrible, at the sound.

Tintin dashes back to his bed as fast as he can, stumbling as he goes before finally falling onto it, wrapping himself round and round in the quilt and closing his eyes and hoping...

\- - -

“No dreams last night, Tintin?” Matron asks, smiling down at him. “Good boy.”

Tintin nods at her and files past with the other boys to prayers and breakfast. He feels strange, floating, his head thick with memories.

This morning there were pine needles caught in the sleeves of his pyjamas.

\- - -

The pine grove is perfect and pristine again, there are no tracks in the snow to tell what happened.

Tintin goes more cautiously this time, looking all around him, though he sees nothing but the endless avenues of trees, like columns in a great, dark, grim cathedral, and the drifted snow piled even higher.

No, there is one object - he sees it as he comes closer to the lamp-post.

Someone has left a statue of a squirrel, all on its own in the middle of the ground. It is a beautiful thing, astonishingly lifelike, every muscle of the little creature straining as it runs.

Tintin draws his fingers back as soon as he touches it. It is cold, yes, but something else too - almost sticky, sending a nasty ache along his whole arm.

But nothing happens, and he settles at the base of the nearest tree, wrapping his quilt round him, to wait.

For a forest it is still strangely quiet. No owls, no rustle from badgers or weasels such as he has been learning about in his boy scout training. Even the trees don’t move.

“I am going to help him,” Tintin says softly, to whatever is listening, and keeps waiting.

“Don’t give up, do you?” says the dog.

Tintin twists, shocked. The dog has come up behind him and now stands at his shoulder, shaking its head.

“I saw him,” Tintin insists, although his voice shakes slightly as his pulse steadies again. “I saw him in a place where it was deep winter, and it is winter here.”

The dog is staring at him. “It is always winter here,” it says - quietly, despairing.

“It can’t always be winter,” Tintin reasons. “Everything would die.”

“Life will come back,” the dog answers. “Or so they say. But the centaurs tell us those stars have many years yet to align - it is not to be now. You should not be here.”

Tintin is going to protest again, when the wind changes and on the air he hears it, the echoing end of a howl.

He stands up at once, peering forwards, trying to spot any further clue as to the origin of the sound.

“That is him!” he tells the dog, joyfully. “That is the boy!” And then, looking down, frowning and putting his hands on his hips. “I am supposed to be here, for him. I know I am.”

“The boy is right, oh Dog,” says another voice, and Tintin turns in astonishment to see a figure coming out from behind the shadow of the trees.

It is a woman, almost a woman. A woman with long hair flowing down her back, wearing a wreath of ash leaves and a dress that would be too light for many a summer day, let alone this forest in the depths of a freeze. She moves as if she walks, but she does not walk. She has no feet, Tintin sees, towards the ground she simply fades away.

“I hear his calling on the wind,” the woman continues. She is hugging her arms about herself as if she feels the cold, though even her hands are very slightly translucent. Her face is pale and her eyes dark-rimmed - she looks tired - exhausted - and half-starved. “He is no better off now than ever he was in Her castle.”

The dogs snarls: “Be careful of the words you speak, Meliai – your sisters are listening.”

“The pines are not my sisters. They are ancient and uncaring as the sleeping stars - what matters it to them if the snow falls or ceases to?” She is standing next to Tintin now, and she takes his hand in her own - suddenly he smells the scent of grass in sunlight, of dew on the blossom.

“They say the boy was found washed up on the shore,” she whispers, “and that this alarmed the Queen greatly, because he had come from the East. She brought him to her prison, and shackled him to the animal Michê, who she feared so greatly for his likeness to a child of Eve and Adam, and who has now forgotten how to talk.”

As she speaks the last words she winces, and the dog whines. Tintin leans in closer towards her.

“But Michê had not forgotten his soul entirely, despite all she did to him. He took the boy away to the North, to Ettinsmoor, and there they hide together, somewhere in the mountains.”

The dog snorts. “Nonsense, it is a rumour of the trees. Both of them are stone and in Her courtyard, depend on it.”

Tintin draws himself up. “He is alive. He is calling for me. I will find him.”

The woman Meliai smiles faintly at him. All of her, he realises, is becoming more faint - with a sigh like the creak of a breaking bough, she is fading away entirely.

“You will help me, won’t you?” he asks the dog. “At least tell me the way to Ettinsmoor.”

 “You? You are only a boy.”

Tintin nods. “So is he. And he needs me. And he is more afraid than I am.”

\- - -

He walks behind the dog for what may be days - it is dark nearly all the time, and the further north they go, the thicker falls the snow, until the air is grey and solid with it and his eyes sting and he cannot breathe, and it is all just as it has been in his dreams.

On the wind, the howling is growing louder, and with it come the cries, desperate and breaking – “Tintin! Tintin!”

 Tintin has never been so cold or so hungry in his life, but he straightens his shoulders and pushes on. The dog catches food for them sometimes, and one night as they journey through a mountain pass, leads them into a cave cut into the stone, where other animals are huddled around a fire, staring into the flames as a badger sings a keening, lilting lament.

\- - -

“... and he will grow and forget that you can talk, and in time you will forget as well,” a fox is whispering. Tintin blinks his eyes, he has slept in the warmth of the fire, wrapped in the softness of his quilt, and the dog is some way away in conversation.

“He is a better creature than most,” the dog replies. “And what do you offer me here, for my future? What can this place give any of us, now? Meliai is the last of her kind and she is fading. It has been months since I saw a centaur and Michê was neither first nor last of us to run mad. Maugrim has my scent - for any excuse he will hunt me down.” And then, sighing. “Besides, I do not think he will forget. Not entirely. I do not think he will ever be blind to what is true and valuable.”

Tintin struggles to understand, but the words and the names wash over him, and he falls to sleep again. The badger is singing once more, a crooning lullaby; her voice is almost like Matron’s.

\- - -

Near the top of a sheer cliff face Tintin struggles to climb, again and again missing his foothold, he finds the boy at last.

He is young, he looks younger than Tintin although this may be because he is thin, terribly thin and wearing only rags. He is lying on a bed of juniper branches, and there is mess around him, the skeletons of little animals and a great deal of shed hair, thick and black, no doubt from the animal Tintin has been trying not to imagine. 

“Tintin!” he says, sitting up, tears in his eyes at the sight of him, and suddenly Tintin remembers his name and goes to him, kneeling down, hugging him although he has never known how to hug anyone.

“Chang!”

“Tintin, how often I have thought of you!”

Tintin is filled with joy that he cannot understand. “How do I know you, Chang? How did you know to call for me?”

Chang doesn’t seem to hear him, he hugs Tintin in return, and Tintin helps him down the rocky ledges, until they reach the bottom where the dog waits, guarding the supplies.

Tintin guides him to sit down in the lee of a boulder, and wraps his quilt around the three of them, and pulls it tight.

\- - -

“Tintin? Can you hear me now?”

Tintin blinks - his eyes are dry and sore. Matron is leaning over him. He is in bed, but not in the forest, and not in the dormitory.

He is in Matron’s room, under all his sheets and blankets, and she is sitting in a chair by his bed, leaning over to wipe his face with a cool flannel.

“Tintin? How are you feeling now, dear?”

Tintin starts to talk and finds his throat is aching, his mouth parched. She passes him a cup filled with hot, sugary liquid and he sips, looking about.

“You’ve had a terrible fever, poor boy. The doctor thinks something came in that quilt from China, I’m afraid we’ve had to burn it – I’ll write to your mother and explain, don’t worry. She’s just sent you a letter, see here? Shall I read it to you?”

Tintin sits back; all of him aches, as if he had been walking for days, his legs feel bruised, cut, scraped as if by sharp and unyielding rocks.

Matron reads the letter in her clear, kind voice. Sometimes Tintin forgets that his mother’s voice cannot actually be like Matron’s - that it is just that Matron reads her letters.

It has been a very busy time in Yuncheng, Matron reads. There has been an outbreak of illness, and Tintin will be glad to hear that although Chang was very sick for a while, his fever has finally broken and he is well again and always eager to hear about his brother Tintin in Belgium and asking when he will meet him.

“Just as the Doctor suspected,” Matron mutters, interrupting herself. “It must have come in the quilt for certain. In the future, some kind of sterilisation, I think, perhaps carbolic...” Then she breaks off, pulling something from the envelope. “Oh look, Tintin, here is a photograph of your Chinese brother – now you can see what he looks like.”

Tintin takes the picture.

It is Chang.

“It has been a long time since you saw your mother and father, hasn’t it?” Matron says softly, kneeling down on the floor by his bed, stroking the hair off his forehead, the little bit that will never lie flat. “It is not a bad or shameful thing to be lonely, Tintin. But it is not a good thing. Perhaps, if your parents and the headmaster agree, we can find you a companion.”

\- - -

At the kennels, Tintin finds him at once, runs to him past all the pedigree puppies Matron wants to linger and coo over.

“This is Snowy,” he says, turning to her, pushing his fingers through the chicken-wire to where the white wire-hair terrier is bouncing joyfully and barking at him. “This is Snowy, and we will never leave each other.”

She smiles and ruffles his hair, and goes away to talk to the man in charge, and Tintin kneels down, level with the dog and whispers. “You came back too? How did you manage to find me?”

“In every world, certain people always find each other,” the dog answers, and licks his fingers, and then glances quickly at where Matron is coming back and starts barking again, just as happily.

\- - -

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
